


History Repeating

by Ark



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, Multiple Partners, Sex, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-16
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-03 18:26:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Damon,” says Elijah calmly, in a low, library voice. “I'm afraid we have a problem.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	History Repeating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pleasebekidding](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasebekidding/gifts).



> For pleasebekidding, because.

One moment Damon is in the den reading a thick old book on magic jewelry and the alchemical properties of precious stones, and the next Elijah is sitting next to him on the far end of the plush couch as though he'd beamed on board the starship Salvatore.

There hadn't even been the telltale whoosh of air to warn a guy, just a blink and then wouldn't you know, there's Elijah Mikaelsen, legs crossed with obscene elegance, impeccable in a two-thousand dollar suit, every perfect hair in place. Looking for all the world as though he'd been there at leisure for hours.

“Why hello, you,” says Damon, snapping the book shut, trying to keep calm and carry on. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Damon,” says Elijah, and since he doesn't smile, not even a little, not even a tiny smidgen of a smile, it's bad, really really bad, so Damon can't smile either. A nervous smirk fights to break free regardless. It's usually his best self-defense. 

Abrupt icy fear rakes excruciating nails down the length of his spine. They know.

They fucking know.

They know. They _knew_ which meant

Dead. Dead dead dead no no _no_ already dead no goodbyes even there wouldn't get to be a goodbye now no 

Already dead? Was he already dead? Had they found him already, taken him and --

If Damon could speak he'd make a sound like the word _wrenched_ but he can't speak and Elijah's still talking anyway. Focusing on this and not completely fucking freaking the fuck out yet is important so he does he tries he does he really does

but Jesus fuck they knew so it meant that they had killed him already

and Damon is going to grow white oak trees somehow and nurse them for the centuries it takes them to mature and then kill all of the Originals, each and every one, which will kill them all, all of the vampires, bye-bye vampires, and he'll end the world that way

and somewhere here in town there is still a hidden stake, which meant that when he found it he could start by killing the one who had done it, who had dared to touch Alaric, and he would make them suffer every single day of his life until

“Damon,” says Elijah again, calmly, in a low, library voice. “I'm afraid we have a problem.”

almost impossible to subdue Elijah and make him suffer for being the messenger but somehow he'll do it, it's a shame it had to be Elijah but Elijah probably volunteered to be the one to tell him and

“Say it,” Damon says somehow. He's grinding his teeth so hard he's seconds from vamping out and Elijah knows it, can smell the change on him before capillaries and fangs threaten to show. “Just say it.”

he's dead and I didn't wasn't there and he's not coming back from it this time and I didn't get to see his stupid living face one more time only just one more time see his eyes look the way they do when they look at me and no one will ever look at me again like that, never again just like that, and

“Little escapes our notice. Mystic Falls is and has always been our home. We knew about the murders.” Elijah is serene, placid as still water, deeper than lakes. The way he sits is unwritten poetry. Birds sing about his posture from the open window.

It's sad Damon will have to torture and kill him. Elijah's his favorite Original, natch. So yeah it's a shame about the killing-of-Elijah that will have to happen because Elijah says, “We know about your teacher. The accidental killer.”

“Alaric.” Damon has to say his name to make him real again. “Tell me.” So we can begin.

“I have him,” says Elijah.

And when he says that Damon's jaw unhooks like a hungry snake before he can stop it, but then he makes his mouth show the beaming grin that's the reflex of a hundred trillion billion braincells in Damon's brain screaming out at once in incredulous joy.

“There was some dispute amongst my siblings as to how to immediately approach the situation, and I thought it prudent to secure Mr. Saltzman for everyone's safety until the situation is...resolved.”

“I fucking love you,” Damon says, ignoring Elijah's almost-surprised expression at the mercurial shift and the utter exuberance in Damon's voice. “You are the best fucking Original vampire ever in the history of fucking _time_.”

Alive. Alive alive alive alive alive alive. Safe. Somewhat safe. Didn't matter, that. Alive. Ric was alive. That was all that mattered.

“It must be resolved, however,” warns Elijah, “one way or the other. And soon, Damon. I am one and my siblings are three, and they are bent on the easiest solution. The teacher is less than nothing to them, as you must imagine. They see only a scorpion who could fatally bite. And a snack.” He crosses long, impossibly strong arms for emphasis. “They cannot abide the concept of keeping him alive in the hopes he might reveal the whereabouts of the final stake, or that you and your friends no doubt seek to cure him of his affliction so that this issue of his alter-ego's desire to kill vampires is less pressing. They do not care that anyone cares for him. I am not my family. I can give you a few days, but not many.”

“Most goddamned gorgeous perfect wonderful genius awesome vampire on the planet,” says Damon, singing the praises, still only hearing _alive alive alive_ and days, they had days to save Ric.

Days! Elijah could have said he had an hour and he'd still vault across the space of the couch to kiss him soundly, which he does, daring to buss Elijah's flawless mouth, which luckily quirks eloquent amusement at the action. “You are like a glorious shining archangel come up from hell and--”

“Do be silent for just a moment.” Elijah says _shut the fuck up_ with such class. He even looks classily exasperated with Damon, not pissy-looking like everyone else gets. “You know the seriousness of the situation. With their lives threatened nothing will stop my siblings, and with whole bloodlines at risk many other vampires will feel the same. Until the stake is recovered his hours are numbered.”

The words sober Damon too much, far too much, so he nods, reaches confidently behind his head with one arm for the bottle of bourbon on the sidetable. He hooks it and uncorks it and takes a long swig, then offers the bottle to Elijah, who actually accepts.

Huh. Damon can never read shit about this guy. For all the world like a proper prince or grand archduke of something, but there he goes, swallowing from the bottle, not minding Damon's backwash, easy breezy beautiful. Though other people didn't sip from bottles and make it look like a work of fine art that would auction for millions. What the hell _was it_ about Elijah?

“I have my best people on the case,” Damon assures him, and it's true. Elena and Stefan were making eyes at each other pouring over dusty old tomes that had belonged to Bonnie's grandmother and Founders' diaries, and Bonnie herself was working the witch social networks to see if anyone had a spell that could help Ric more than the herbs had. Matt was passing all his time in between school and the Grill seeking every conceivable likely and unlikely hiding place in Mystic Falls for the white oak stake. He'd combed half the town already to frustration.

Caroline insisted they were all living in the past and was spending hours posting on online forums and message boards and Googling goth and fairy-tale websites.

“There's so much crap on the internet, you never know,” she'd chirruped, and it was all the same to Damon as long as they were searching for the answer. If Caroline figured out how to fix Ric via Twitter, well, fuck, he's all for modernization.

And Damon. Damon was reading every book about magic jewelry and mystical history that he can locate on planet Earth, looking for something, anything, a clue, a hint. Trying not to snap under the pressure and lose it himself, since Alaric needs him not to.

Alive and safe, though. Ric is still alive and safe. Damon has another sip, thinking about it, and says, “Thank you. Thank you, Elijah.”

Most people when he says that if he ever says that say something like _it's not about you it's about Stefan_ or whatever but Elijah just inclines his head. His fascinating face always seems to show all of who he is and none of it. “I try my best to reduce our monstrosity, Damon,” he says with quiet zen. “I questioned the teacher under compulsion to be certain he was not complicit with his crimes. He is a good man.”

“Very good.” Damon has to look away, has to drop the thousand-mile stare. Has to ask, though it's more than half an insult. Still does it. “Ric's...He's all right?”

He feels, rather than sees, the dark curve of Elijah's eyebrow rising. Elijah says, “Of course. He is quite comfortable. But you do understand, if you fail in your endeavors, that I will have to try my own methods before my family can force me to reveal him.”

Elijah is inscrutable, and his methods could mean employing the worst tortures gleaned over centuries of high living or reading Ric freaking magical nursery rhymes to fall asleep and wake up psycho and everything in between. Elijah is capable of anything, but seems big on the old school do-unto-others thing as long as it can be sustained at least, for which Damon is unspeakably grateful. 

Lacking Elijah, someone would be stopping by to toss him Ric's head in a bag by now. Rebekah, maybe, if she knew how much that would hurt Damon, worse than anything she'd done to Damon's body in retribution for leading her on, worse than anything else she could do. Or Klaus, who liked to watch the effect agony and suffering made on things that could still feel. Or maybe Kol, who seemed like the type who enjoyed throwing perfectly beloved heads around for general sport.

“I'll never forget this,” Damon says, turning back to Elijah again, making his expression into the shape that got Elena to smile at him, the one that was gentler, as earnest as Damon Salvatore ever was. “Never.”

Elijah is still inscrutable, his sublime features simply that and nothing more. “You truly love the man, do you not?”

No use in lying, not when he already knows the truth, not when the truth's what sustains Damon. Not when the question's already being phrased that way. So he doesn't hesitate. “Yes. Yeah, I do. I know it looks screwy from afar but he's the fucking wind beneath my wings and all kinds of other awful but accurately metaphorical song lyrics.”

“He said the same. Under compulsion. I didn't ask; he volunteered the information when I was questioning him on other topics. It seems you are quite on his mind.” Damon's heart does a little back flip followed by a miniature break-dance. “I had known you had him in your bed. I did not know the depth of feeling attendant.”

So this is a little odd of a conversation to be having while Ric is stashed away somewhere with the most dangerous vampires in the universe hunting for him and they didn't have _all_ that much time, but they did have days, days are better than usual, so Damon puts his feet up on the coffeetable and kicks back. “I'm an emotional sort of guy. I'm a lover, not a fighter, despite what you may have heard. I'm always giving people the wrong impression. Plus they love to gossip about me, can't help it. Goes with being irresistible.” Tries to keep this flippant so they can get back to the part where they save Ric from doom.

“I know,” says Elijah. “I have...observed you.”

Damon gives a solid blink as a response. Elijah's observing him all right: already sharp-visaged, a right royal falcon, the edges of his cheekbones look cut by diamonds now. Damon blinks some more.

Elijah Mikaelsen, he of the 1000 birthdays and an honorable disposition unequaled by the rest of the inhabitants of the planet earth, was looking at him, Damon Prodigal Black Sheep Salvatore, with something like the color red shading the bend of his exquisite cheek. The fuck?

Okay. Okay, this is weird, this is a little weird, but it's no weirder and a quadrillion times better than Ric being dead, and Elijah had been the one to save him because he was the only Original who cared at all about humanity, and because, because --

Holy fucking shit. “Holy fucking shit,” says Damon. “Do you have a thing for me?”

They sit in silence so that the rude ill-wording of Damon's question can simmer down. Elijah flicks an imaginary fleck from his sleeve, since no dirt settles there, readjusts his pristine shirt-cuff.

When he meets Damon's gaze, his dark eyes are bold and assured but not forward. Calm, foreseen, like everything about him, like Elijah could maybe see a few moments ahead in time and thus meet every situation with grace.

“It is true that you are to my taste,” says Elijah, which is a much better way of saying it.

Damon is aware that he's opened and closed his mouth a few times and that the stranded fish look isn't his finest. This is...unexpected but not bad. Not bad, just weird, a little left-fieldy. Damon's seen a lot of strange things over the years and Elijah Mikaelsen saying that he's tasty is really very far from bad. This he can handle. Maybe.

He wishes Ric were here. Ric would know what to do. Ric is oddly unafraid of Elijah, had stabbed him sort-of-dead once without thinking twice to save Damon's life. Elijah seems to have let that go as water under the bridge. Is keeping Ric safe, though he wishes he were here.

Damon swallows. Too much dry mouth. Thinks about saying all sorts of different things. Settles on a thing, finally. “I won't insult you with any offers or bargains. If you want any of me, all of me is already in your hands.”

He actually gets Elijah to fully blink this time with that one. Score one, Team Salvatore. Elijah says, “And what would your Alaric say to this?”

Damon thinks about it. He can pull up Ric's face in his mind's eye always, usually debauched-looking like after the best kind of long fuck, but now he can see Ric grinning, amused, aroused, cautious, wonderful. Ric goading him on, daring him, before he went for Elijah first.

“He'd want me to videotape it,” says Damon.

Elijah attends to his other shirt-cuff. “Not tonight, I think,” he says. “You've little time enough for your project, and I have Mikaelsens to manage.”

Damon doesn't get it now. He's put on his sexiest, prettiest face, put up the eyebrows the way people liked best, leaned forward and looked ready, because he is, he thinks, but Elijah hasn't changed in demeanor save a somehow straighter spine.

“You're turning me down?” It doesn't usually go like this.

“No,” says Elijah. He cants his head, considering. “I'm saving you for later.”

Then Elijah isn't on the couch anymore, and Damon has a heavy open book in his hands, turned to a page about ancient obsidian.

 

***

 

The next day doesn't go any better. Not fruitful, no fruit at all.

Elena and Stefan look over musty diaries and make doe eyes, Bonnie's witches are quiet, Matt continues to find nothing but priceless Civil War relics, and Caroline has 114 new Facebook friends but no new leads.

Damon reads. Drinks, and reads. Drink-reads, long into the night. Somewhere Ric is alone, or dead again, or with Elijah.

As though summoned, Elijah is there again when Damon turns to look, graceful lines composed on the couch. Only a different sleek dark suit on Elijah and a different book in Damon's hand proves that it is not yesterday.

“Hello,” says Damon, turning down the flippant. He says it slowly.

Elijah smiles this time. “Hello.”

He takes a sleek white phone from his pocket and starts tapping the screen with one tapered finger while Damon's pulse runs ragged.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh sweet, sweet Elijah.

Elijah puts the phone up to hear, waits for a connection, then silently passes it to Damon, who keeps his hands steady because this is important. Then Elijah gets up and paces from the room, closing the door with a gentle click behind him.

Damon snaps the handset to his ear. Now it's never felt so hard to form a greeting, or so hopeful. “Hello?”

“Damon.”

It's the sweetest sound that's ever been sounded.

“ _Ric_. Christ, Alaric. Christ. Where are you?” Knows he shouldn't ask and Ric can't answer but can't stop himself from saying it, saying that first, all of him is primed and strung and aching to go and get him, to win him back from this.

“I don't--”

“I know, I know.” Damon bites his lip until it bleeds, back-steps. “It doesn't matter. It doesn't. Better if I didn't know anyway. God, tell me it's really you.”

“It's really me.” Modern cell phones are a wonder, no static on the line at all, just Ric's pure clear strong voice close to Damon's ear like when his lips were there.

“Prove it.”

The barest pause. “Four days ago you fucked me for a solid five hours at the loft in what you called 'vampire-sex-psycho-rehab.' It was great, but it didn't work, man. I want my money back.”

“ _Ric_. You're all right? You swear? You're not hung in chains somewhere being compelled to say so?”

“I...I have a room, Damon. I'm okay. I have everything I need. Elijah's been kind.”

“He has.” Damon's holding the phone too hard against his ear. It hurts. It hurts so fucking good. “I miss you. You have no idea. We're all working on this. We're going to find a way. There's always something we didn't see coming, right?”

“I'll hold out for the twist,” says Alaric, but he sounds tired. “Promise me no one else will get hurt in this.”

“I promise you won't,” says Damon. “I love you. Fuck, I love you.”

He can nearly see Alaric's warmly answering smile and the way his eyes are lit just so. “I love you, too. It's gonna be okay, okay, Damon? One way or the other, we'll figure this out.”

“You sound like Elijah,” Damon says, indelicate.

Ric is quiet a precious second of their phone-time. Then his known knowing tone is on the line. “He wants you. I know. Asked a lot of questions once I got to talking and didn't make me forget that he'd asked them. I think that was his way of letting me know he has a crush on you.”

“I was about to mention,” says Damon. “Funny thing about that.”

“You don't need my permission,” says Alaric, which is one of eleventy-billion reasons Damon loves him. Then he continues, tinged with sarcasm and something else: “You can have my blessing, for what it's worth. I just wish I were there,” which is another reason Damon loves him. Lust, longing, desire, that was the something else in Alaric's voice. The primary jealousy deriving from his inability not to bear witness and participate himself. Damon could eat him alive.

“Me too.” Sprawled across the couch with the phone to his ear isn't enough; he'd swallow the damn thing if it could somehow keep Alaric anchored close. “I told Elijah you'd think that.”

“You could tape it --”

Damon wants to laugh until he cries. “Told him you'd say that.”

Whenever Ric doesn't speak immediately Damon is terrified their call has slipped away. Then Ric says, slowly, “So, did you two...”

“No,” Damon says, honest enough. “Not yet.”

Ric exhales. “What if you get all up in the immaculate Original sex, though? I don't think anyone's ever competed with Elijah save his immediate family and a mirror. What if he carries you off to the rolling hills of Castlevania?” Still heavy on the sarcasm but there's a note of unease. “I trust him, and I owe him my life, Damon. But I...”

His voice trails too far away. “Go on,” Damon urges. “Please. Say anything.”

“I just guess I thought that if -- when -- if --” Words are a sudden struggle, then Alaric seems to regather himself and try again. “Thought I'd be there for something like this.”

And Damon knows what he means. Always knows what Ric means even and especially when he doesn't say it. _Something like this._ Something that was new and different than the casual sex with others that was sometimes necessary for a plan or a plain desire that wasn't more than bodies pushed together, that didn't mean anything else.

Elijah was different. Elijah was unlike any other entity on Earth. Elijah contained multitudes, meant something simply by being. Elijah already meant too much.

“Soon you'll be all patched up, and you'll be back here with me,” Damon tells him, changing the subject because Ric always knows what Damon means, too, without saying it, and Ric needs other words now. “And when you're back it's going to be a problem because I'm never going to let you out of the house again and I'm going to keep you as my sex slave with a really cool collar and fuck you on the hour every hour for like a year or at least two straight days. When I get you back I'm going to tie you to our bed and keep you there and fuck you 'til you see the face of God.”

Well, that certainly got zealous fast, but Ric just laughs low and rich and velvety against Damon's ear. “Is that a promise?”

“Even better. A pinky-swear.”

Ric starts to say something full of mirth and snark but then his voice slides, shifts abruptly like a gear has been thrown. All of him is flat. “Damon. We were given fifteen minutes. This is our thirteenth. In one hundred and twenty seconds I will hang up the phone and forget that I have it.”

“Fuck shit hell crap piss damn,” says Damon.

“Excuse me?” Ric says. Then, “What did I just say?”

“We have to go now,” Damon answers, losing precious seconds in biting through the corner of a leather couch-pillow. “You're about to forget about Alexander Graham Bell's wondrous invention.”

Ric groans, not the kind of groan Damon prefers, but still a delicious sort of annoyed noise. Ric didn't want to go, either. Ric wants to be up against Damon's ear, wants Damon up against his own. “Fucking vampires,” he swears. Then, “I love you, you fucking vampire.”

“I love you more,” says Damon, and he hangs up the phone before Alaric can be made to.

After a while the door to the den opens and Elijah steps through into the light. He doesn't come far inside, standing framed by a redwood bookshelf.

Damon pushes up from the couch and goes to meet him. He forks over the phone, thinks that his eyes are doing enough speaking while he does that, and when their fingers touch over metal and plastic it is purposeful, felt.

“Again,” says Damon. “Thank you.”

Elijah nods, the small device like a key to Alaric slipping into his pocket. “This is a regretful situation for all involved,” he says. “You suffer as he does. With him.”

Damon's shoulders lift in a shrug, and if he's aware of the way his muscles flex under the thin t-shirt with the motion, well, he's aware. “What can I say. I was born with an over-enlarged empathetic gland.”

“It is remarkable,” says Elijah, the fine narrows of his face so smooth as to have been hewn and carved. “I admire you both.”

“Coincidentally, we're big fans of you as well,” Damon says. Somehow the space keeps halving between them though neither appears to move. “Ric and I are always saying, 'What _is_ it about that Elijah?'” He lets his smirk deepen an inch, and startles the first winningly unguarded smile from Elijah since the whole mess began.

Elijah smiling like this or not had probably instigated several wars throughout history. “So they say.”

“We've said it in bed,” says Damon, with his pink tongue just so.

When Elijah kisses him it's kind of weird because it's like being hit by lightning while choirs of angels sing about it. Agony and ecstasies abound. Anything done by an Original is bound to be intense, but Damon thinks that if he were human his head might have snapped off.

Instead the choirs keep singing paeans, and Elijah is kissing him, soft lush lips red as blood and roses, softer than roses are, heavier than mountains. His tongue teases Damon's only once but induces sudden acute intoxication.

Nothing else touches, nothing but mouths, but mouths were meant to touch like this. Pulling back, even Elijah cannot resist letting his teeth ghost over Damon's full lower lip, falling trap as so many had before. Wasn't his fault. Damon's lower lip is totally awesome.

“I thought so,” says Elijah, standing back. He'd heard how Damon's heart had skipped and then plunged off a cliff, and his own pulse is none too slow either, even if his face is reset to its diamond-hard edge. “I'll take my leave of you, Damon Salvatore, that you might return to other pursuits.”

Blood rushing all over the place, Damon reaches out and curls his fingers around Elijah's milky wrist. Half on fabric, half on skin, somehow like trying to contain the sea. “You're turning me down _again_? Dude, my self-esteem is in serious tatters here.”

“You look at time the wrong way,” Elijah says, not unkindly, with a tiny bloom of a smile. “You and I have a theoretically infinite amount of it. The problem at hand is as bound in hours as the books on the wall.”

Damon hasn't let go of his wrist, flutter of a pulse and deceptively delicate bones underneath the pads of his fingertips. “Why me?”

It isn't like he's not aware of his own utter hotness, like, come on, some things are hard to miss especially when strangers tell you on the street for a hundred and fifty years and change, and kids want your autograph just for being that pretty, and women and men buy you drinks and slip keys into your pocket since the age you could drink and fuck, but this is Elijah, who could have anyone in the world.

Damon hadn't been particularly used to being really wanted for himself so much as tolerated because of Stefan, or else shallowly desired for his smokin' good looks, before Alaric happened. He'd spent too many lifetimes only wanting Katherine, but then it turned out Katherine didn't want him back. Then Ric had wanted him so much better than Katherine had, so that had actually turned out great in the end. Huh.

But again, Elijah. Who says, “I think it was the way you love.”

“How's that?” What? He is totally scorchingly attractive. Ric told him that twenty times a day. Children pointed at him on the sidewalk, like, look at Hot Man go! Come on!

It isn't as though Damon didn't have to work for this fabulous body just because he's a vampire. Give a guy a little credit for all those sit-ups and pull-ups and push-ups and heavy, heavy weights.

Elijah isn't party to the dialogue in Damon's head so he follows their actual conversation, elaborating on his first answer about how Damon loves. “With all of yourself, selfish and selflessly.”

Okay, this is better, he's definitely devouring all of Damon with those eyes now. “That is exceedingly rare,” Elijah continues. “And a thing more beautiful even than your considerable outward beauty.”

So the hotness factor _is_ still in play. Whew. Score two, Team Salvatore. “People usually find my helpful obsessive devotion my most annoying attribute.”

“I am not people,” says Elijah, which should be on his business card.

He gently dislodges his arm from Damon's grip, but before they are entirely apart he says, softly, “I would choose once more to save you for a more proper time. Do you object?”

“I'm not very good at waiting,” Damon admits. “That's the other thing I generally get yelled at about.”

Elijah nods as though this is all perfectly understandable. “You are very young,” he says, which no one's said to Damon since he was, centuries ago. But by Elijahian standards he supposes he is. It isn't an insult, anyway, just a keen observation, like most things Elijah said.

“I'll give maturity a go,” says Damon. There's a whole new stack of yellowing books borrowed at cost from elite and occult libraries around the world that arrived in the afternoon, and he's only a quarter of the way through. “Will you tell Ric...Will you tell Ric hello?”

Elijah's new nod and smile are fainter but no less radiant to see as he begins to confidently back-step out of the den like he has eyes in the back of his head, his seen clear brown eyes on Damon. His regard never ceasing to pull Damon apart, Elijah says, “I will tell him hello,” and he closes the door behind him and departs with the same words between them they had used upon arrival.

 

***

 

Damon doesn't sleep much that night, only reads, and when he nods off his strange dreams are thick with flashes of silver and chunks of colorful stone. There is a parade of stately kings and queens with faces not unlike Elijah's that go past, all of them heavy with bewitched jewelry.

One time he dreams that Frodo and Sam the hobbits have shown up to carry Ric's stupid fucking ring straight into Mordor and toss it it into the fiery pits of Mount Doom and end all of this crap once and for all, and it's a good sort of dream, excellently dramatic, but this is no time for literary analogies.

After tearing through a tiny ancient-looking book bound in a leathery substance Damon doesn't want to think about that warns too keenly of the side-effects of daring to dabble in the powers of life and death, after shuddering and tossing it aside, Damon dreams of Alaric.

They are naked in bed, not even fucking, just holding onto each other, bared entangled bodies. The lines of where one starts and the other begins is blurred and unclear. They're together, that's enough, tied with invisible ropes.

“Damon,” says Ric in the dream, cupping a hand to his cheek. “This is what we are. What we've become. Don't you see? Can't you see me?”

“I don't understand,” says Damon, with the fogged confusion of dreamlandia, everything slipping in and out of focus.

“You will,” Ric says confidently, closing the distance between their mouths. His kiss isn't like Elijah's, summoning the winds; Ric's kiss is profoundly knowing and loving and considerate, kissing Damon just the way Damon liked best. Soft at first, then increasingly more insistent, with sly incursions of tongue and later, teeth, his strong hands in Damon's hair always pulling him in closer, tighter, for more and more and more.

When Ric lets them breathe again his lips are still near enough to mouth words and have Damon's lips feel their shape. What Ric says is “Caroline.”

And it's the most bizarre non sequitur to ever emerge from Alaric Saltzman after a kiss like that, Damon thinks, even in a dream, even if Caroline is pretty cool these days, but still it didn't make sense, even if Ric feels terribly guilty about the whole killing-her-father deal.

He starts to ask what the fuck, but his fool brain plunges into other dreaming, about the fires of Mount Doom churning out obsidian, until Damon awakens with a jolt. He's slumped halfway over on the couch, surrounded by creepy and arcane books, with Vampire Barbie on the brain in all her perky blondness.

Caroline. Why Caroline?

She's trying to help in her way, sure, has been good enough to help Alaric for their sake but mostly for love of Elena, and she's tracked down a couple of useful books for Damon online in the course of her internet pursuits, hasn't been entirely unhelpful. She is best at keeping their spirits up with unflagging cheerleader pep.

But why Caroline? What did Damon have to do with Caroline?

What had he ever done to Caroline?

Oh, fuck. 

Oh fuck shit fuckity fuck, Damon is a fucking idiot.

Immersed for days in tomes on magical powers and accessories, and he'd somehow entirely forgotten about his own. Vampires aren't just mega strong and incredibly super-hot. There are other perks.

After he'd slept with Caroline and drank from her and manipulated her mind in a time that felt longer ago than the Civil War, Damon had been able to reach out to her from far away, make her help him with the force of his will. Sex and blood established a bond, a path that could be followed.

If he'd been able to trace Caroline from afar after their few trysts, his connection to Alaric pending years of mind-blowing sex and heady emotion and a whole lot of blood drinking should be something else entirely. A rope, where others were threads.

Damon swivels, drops horizontal across the length of the couch. Closes his eyes thinking fuck shit fuck you are a stupid dumbass who doesn't deserve any kind of vampire vampire merit badge ever Ric is going to kick your sorry ass but then it doesn't matter how much of a short-sighted fuck up Damon is, because he centers himself and _reaches_

and oh yes thank you everything unholy yes, he can reach and find and touch Alaric, there he is and it isn't even hard. The effort had nearly killed him with Caroline, trying to force her to free him, but once he knows what he wants and thinks about Ric, everything Ric, everything Ric is and they are, there he is, suddenly in contact with the subconscious that is Alaric Saltzman's. It's kinda hard to describe if you've never done it before.

Damon has never done it before like this. Never been able to slip in and know he's welcomed immediately, that he's been felt lacking, in fact.

Touch. First contact. Everything at once. All that they are together reunited. _Hi._ A little sheepish.

 _Took you fucking long enough, ass,_ thinks Alaric.

 _I'm slow like the turtle and the hare,_ Damon corrects. _But I win the race in the end._

_It's really you? I was hoping you might finally decide to try some vampire Jedi shit but this is...weird, man. I haven't cracked up again and am hearing your voice a bit too clearly in my brain?_

_It's really me,_ Damon tells him, as they echo their earlier conversation.

_Prove it. Think something I wouldn't._

Damon thinks. _You're just dying to become a vampire tomorrow. You wanna be a vampire so bad you can already taste the hot flowing gushing scrumptious yummy blood in a torrential river down your esophagus._

 _No thanks. And ew. And thanks._ Ric thinks, with a hopeful tinge, _So we don't need cell phones? We've got our own Psychic Hotline?_

 _Something like. More like...Psychic walkie-talkies. I can't maintain it for very long at once._ The effort had started to present itself a little while ago in fact but he pushes past it, clings to Ric. It's difficult to admit he can't keep them like this forever, like they belong. _I'll be able to check in on you at least. And fill your mind with filthy fantasies and, okay, boring updates on the state of our research project._

 _Tell me then,_ Alaric thinks, _Quick, while you can,_ and Damon does. Brings him up to speed about their combined non-momentum, vague about it as he can be where the failures are concerned, which is hard to hide when you're sharing someone's subconscious. 

Ric makes smart Ric-suggestions and pointed comments and footnotes here and there. Then Damon fills his awareness with dirty imagery and Ric counters with even more artfully pornographic scenarios.

Damon knows if he doesn't stop soon something's gonna give or snap and it won't be good, won't be good like feeling Alaric like this, being part and parcel of him.

Ric feels it to. _Since you're about to hang up on me again,_ he says, _I love you more, Damon._

 _A likely story,_ Damon strains to phrase, and drops out and back into himself.

 

***

 

The third day is better, by their standards. Stefan and Elena have marked a couple of spells in grimoires that look promising for containing rogue magic, and unearthed some accounts from the Founders of the occasional stray murder in town that could sometimes be traced to a Gilbert. It didn't seem like there'd been other full-on serial killer incidents, though, which was a good sign. Maybe the Founders had discovered a lasting cure after Samantha Gilbert that was waiting to be re-found.

Bonnie has gone up to D.C. to consult with a powerful coven of witches there, and she wouldn't even let Damon kiss her for the effort. Caroline's Please Help Save Our Cursed Teacher tumblr was gathering more followers by the hour. Matt's hunt for the hidden stake had taken on an edge of obsession and gotten the police called twice for invasion of private property.

Once Sheriff Forbes heard what the search was for, she sent Matt home for a nap and put five of her best deputies on stake-search. No matter what she thought of vampires, Caroline was still her daughter and ran the chance of being killed if the stake was used on an Original. Liz had given Damon quite the tongue-lashing for not including her from the first.

Damon reads, and sips bourbon, and pulls Alaric in close to him sometimes and thinks with him, and reads, and waits for Elijah.

For two nights Elijah has borne him precious gifts, and this is the third, the fairy-tale evening.

Tonight, Elijah knocks on the door instead of seeming to materialize. Damon has been almost ready, dressed in a soft button-down shirt, an indigo that brought out his eyes all the more, if that were possible, neatly tailored dark pants, shiny shoes of Italian leather. His hair is clean and combed, and he knows that he gleams.

On the other side of the door, Elijah is ever a surprise: casual in a black short-sleeved t-shirt and jeans, for once unarmored in a suit. His fresh-shaven cheeks could be used to cut glass, and his dark eyes are both boundless and inquisitive underneath sculpted eyebrows. His hair, that enviable, exquisite mane, is still cropped and styled modern-short, spiky with lucky gel.

They're acting as though there is a line between them and the door, as though Elijah didn't already have permission to come inside.

So Damon is the one to move, moving back, the door swinging loose on its hinges. “You are very welcome.”

Elijah takes one step across the threshold, and this night is different. The air moves and Damon is thrown into a wall, which wall he doesn't know, and he is being devoured.

Elijah is kissing him, this time all open-mouthed with tongues so they can't scream about it, and his hands with the wisdom of untold centuries are ferocious on Damon's body. He feels himself felt everywhere. They're crushed so hard together they've done damage to the plaster and possibly the internal structure of the house.

This is unlike anything done with Alaric, anything done with anyone else, Damon's never been so outmatched and overwhelmed. All his nerve-endings are on fire and for once he doesn't know which sexy approach to make, which tack to take. Elijah's unreadable even with every inch of him hard against the length of Damon.

But if Elijah likes him, if Elijah has a thing, that means Elijah likes Damon in all his cocky glory, not just shocky-eyed and reacting, so Damon pushes back with his hips and one of his finest smirks, breaking off the kiss that threatens both breathing and mental stability.

“Got tired of waiting?” Damon purrs, and Elijah's hands fit and hold to his tricky, conniving, thrusting hips. “Did time trip you up, look at you the wrong way?”

Elijah has enough self-control to start slowly releasing the pearlescent buttons on Damon's shirt-front, though it's clear neither would mind a good rip and tear. Instead he slips them through neat holes with maddening precision, each lost button exposing more of Damon's skin to the light. “I am infinitely patient,” Elijah replies. “I am not infallible.”

When all the buttons are done Elijah tugs and Damon twists and then he is naked to the low-slung waist of his pants, his chest and abs and upper arms in all their glory nicely accentuated by the hall lighting, the lamp nearest to them bent but not broken with the force of impact against the wall.

Damon lets himself preen, a little, because he knows what he looks like, and Elijah lays a hand on either side of his collarbone. He lets his fingers and fingernails trail down the flat plane of Damon's abdomen, then wanders fingertips to where the vee of his hips urge downward motion. “Tell me one thing only,” says Elijah.

Feels good and strange to be the focus of so much intense attention, Elijah's exploratory touches both fierce and somehow tentative, with the care of an archaeologist uncovering something coveted from the sand.

Damon nods, so Elijah says, “You are aroused, but that is a body's response, no more. Do you want me, Damon?”

Damon chews on kiss-swollen lips, considering. “Everybody wants you.”

Elijah's smile is thin, but flickers, congenial. “Everybody wants you, too.”

“What a sight we must be together,” says Damon, and this time he tilts forward purposefully to kiss Elijah: not like how he kisses Ric, that isn't this; this isn't love, but it is profoundly understood and reciprocated lust, another sort of forged connection. Occasionally as satisfying, as crucial, as love is.

“I want you,” Damon says. “And you still scare the hell out of me, which gives it kind of a kinky edge. I like kinky edges too.”

Then they're upstairs and crashed through the door of one of the empty rooms from when the mansion was really a boarding house. Dusty unused bed with an ancient duvet, a light-switch that doesn't work, shrouded mirror, dusty chairs, dusty everything. Doesn't matter. Damon lands on the bed with Elijah belting his hips, and nothing about Elijah is tentative now.

Elijah draws the black t-shirt over his head and tosses it aside, and Damon thinks Elijah shirtless should be marked as some kind of world event, it's that extraordinary, but then Elijah is levering himself down and his mouth is volcano-hot on Damon's neck, and their chests press skin to sweat-slicked skin.

And then Elijah is biting him, yeah, Elijah is definitely biting him, fuck ow fuck, a graceful sort of gnaw but also a deep bite right at the juncture of throat and shoulder, and he's swallowing greedy mouthfuls of Damon's blood, which, whoa, this was new but maybe a Mikaelsen thing.

Eventually Damon has to squirm, because, fuck, getting your blood sucked out _hurt_ , Christ, and Elijah after several moments heeds Damon's rolling, roiling body because that's also interesting. He pulls up and back, delicately wiping stray drops away from his lips, elegant fangs receding, though his mouth remains blood-red.

“Delicious,” says Elijah. “You taste of passion and fortitude and bourbon.”

Damon is trying to keep his body from shaking with it. “Turns out, that's the name of my perfume line,” he manages.

Elijah seems to loom from a luminous distant height. “I know you know something of waiting,” he says, hungry hands on Damon again, both of them aware of the skin slowly knitting at Damon's throat. “So you will understand when I say I have waited for this a very long time.”

Damon attempts another preen, while Elijah shifts his weight and slides downwards, his fingers on Damon's belt. “I guess we've known each other a while now,” he allows.

And Elijah laughs. It's not a cruel sound, only heavy with too many layers, not quite what a laugh should be. “You are very desirable, Damon, and impossible not to notice, yes. But I meant something different. It has been a while -- I do not know the years -- since I took another vampire to bed. Throughout the centuries, I have not usually found accord with our kind.”

Elijah has undone his belt and buckle and dealt deftly with his zipper, and Damon lifts his lower body so that his pants can be stripped free. Neither remark on his lack of underwear. Damon says, “Mmm. Humans, man. They know how to push the buttons.”

That earns a sharp look before Elijah's expression refocuses. “Yes. Perhaps we are alike in that. Favoring those who ever present the inevitable problem of their vulnerability.”

“Let's not talk for a while,” Damon says, reaching for the snap of Elijah's jeans.

Naked and silent in agreement on the bed they are not shy. They are in their element, creating a new element entirely for the periodic table. 

Damon turns all the tables to show Elijah a thing or two or twenty about blow jobs, which he's really, really, really good at, everyone always says. Elijah's cock is a particular pleasure to blow: a length as perfectly well-made at the rest of him, not too too long or too too thick, just impressively exactly right.

But Elijah fists his hands into Damon's hair and pulls him up and away before the first round of them can end too soon, and then there's another eye-blink where he's over Damon and Damon is sprawled out loose-limbed beneath.

“I'm going to take you now,” he says. And Damon's never been so hung up on a verb before but 'to take' sounds so certain and so very pointed coming from Elijah, sounds removed even from the far more commonly-heard 'to fuck.'

“Take,” Damon thinks he whispers, but then it's hard to think because he gets taken.

Elijah pushes Damon's knees apart and crawls between his thighs, and there's a small bottle in his hand that he uncorks, oil that smells floral and feels silky when it's on Elijah's fingers that go deep and then deeper. 

Damon tosses his head, can't help it, ready but not ready, no one could be prepared for Elijah, even with Elijah preparing him. Elijah does that for a while, moves his fingers that are skilled like a sculptor's and as beautiful as if a sculptor made them in and out and in and out of Damon until Damon gives up the pretense of self-control and just writhes.

Then Elijah's miraculous touch is gone but he's reaching for Damon and pulling him up and closer, those hands that could cause mass destruction with a handful of pebbles angling Damon's hips, slipping under his buttocks. 

Elijah aligns himself with as much precision, thrusts his perfect cock in with a perfect thrust aimed just perfectly, making Damon give a perfect groan with the perfect first go.

A few more like that, just right, flawlessly correct, and Damon unlocks and takes him further and Elijah never seems to end. When he's buried far as bodies will allow he doesn't pause, just stays rooted there, drawing Damon's long arms up over his head. Damon doesn't object, only reaches, so Elijah pins both wrists with one hand. 

Damon is held down, and retaken, if there was any doubt to the matter: Elijah's grip is older than the invention of steel and more solid. Alaric with all his strength could only pretend to keep him down, and when they brought out the vervain ropes, the persistent burning distracted sometimes from the pleasure of it.

Elijah can hold him one-handed so he does, driving into Damon relentlessly at the same time, until they're electrified experiencing bodies with no sign of relief anytime forthcoming. Elijah moves above him and fucks him with the patience and tenacity of the tides.

Feels too good and is too overwhelming, Damon's off of his game, doesn't know quite where to put himself. Is doing pretty well he thinks at taking Elijah's cock again and again and again, no human could do this, and they have the showy extremity of their vampire strength and long-honed prowess to keep them going but Damon can go deeper than this, can make more, can be more, just doesn't know quite how to after a point without Alaric. Up to this had been enough for everyone else. But Elijah doesn't want him absent, Elijah wants all of what he is, so --

Damon _reaches_ hard and drags and pulls and tugs, and this time he yanks Alaric into the sphere of his existence. There's surprise and startling and astonishment and all that as he's displaced across space, but then Ric settles down and can feel what he feels and is with him and --

 _Oh. Oh Christ. Oh, my god._ There's a terribly long pause. Then, _Oh, Damon. Feels so fucking good._

 _Right?_ Relieved and triumphant since Ric's here now and will know what to do, Damon is less panicky, raises his hips this time to meet Elijah's momentum, the slap of their bodies growing louder in the silent room. The bed is creaking, singing. _I need you. You gotta help me. I'm totally fucked here, man._

 _Evidently._ Ric's thoughts are warm and comforting, silken like blanket made of sarcasm. _If I were there, I'd --_ For a moment while Elijah fucks him, Damon and Alaric consider it, overwhelmed with the imagery: of Alaric naked behind Elijah, or cradling Damon, or held between the two. 

Damon groans aloud, and Elijah thrusts harder, and Ric thinks, _But I'm not there, damn it all. Feels good to be you, though. God, you feel good. He's better than I tried not to dream._

Sure it's sorta odd to have Ric sharing his subconscious while he gets screwed up to the eyeballs by the most original of Original vampires, but it's much better than leaving him out. Plus Ric can always be counted on to formulate a good plan. His theory is proven correct as Ric seems to take in more of what's going on: of the weight of Elijah on Damon, the outstanding length of his cock sliding deep. Damon's body twisted under Elijah's, arching up, arms caught by Elijah's hand over his head. Bits of Damon's hair standing on end, staticky from their friction. 

It's awesome and kinky and awesomely kinky to have Ric here too, secretly at least, though this might have been done openly, just the three of them in a room. Instead, it's the two of them in Damon's head and Damon's overwrought sweat-slicked body. 

_First you have to relax,_ comes Alaric's slow, thoughtful thought, the sign of a budding great idea. _You're still all knotted up. It's good, Damon. Feel how good it feels? I want you to relax for me. He wants you, and you've come far enough you might as well let him really know what you can do._

 _Flattery will get you everywhere,_ thinks Damon, but he does as Ric asks, drawing in a deep breath, holding it, then letting it out; lets the tension leave his shoulders and spine, feels himself sinking into the bed. 

His body softens against Elijah's, and when he does that, Elijah's circling grip on his wrists loosens a little, and he pauses to change his rhythm in Damon to something slower, older. His free hand reaches down to fist Damon's cock unhurriedly but perfectly, as usual, on the first go.

 _Ah, fuck,_ thinks Alaric. _Yes, that's it._

“Yes, that's it,” murmurs Damon, an echo.

Elijah doesn't seem to mind the sudden shift in Damon's sprawl or the encouragement, doesn't mind at all, keeps them at it just right. 

Ric's voice is everywhere in his head. _Now...now, pull one of your hands free. He'll let you. He'll like that. Scratch your nails down his back, and don't stop until he reacts. Actually, don't stop at all. Look at him, that's what he needs, such a proud big cat begging to be scratched--_

Damon moans again, full of Ric's suggestions and Elijah's cock, and he sneakily snatches back a hand. The fine arc of Elijah's eyebrow hitches but he allows it. Damon starts at the nape of Elijah's neck and drags his fingernails in and down, scratching hard enough to raise scarlet lines that fade as quickly. 

This time it's Elijah who tosses his head, biting off sound, and Damon sort of wishes he were rocking the floppy-haired look at current so that he could watch Elijah's hair flop all over, but it's an excellent enough sight as is, Elijah spiky-haired and shuddering under the scratches.

 _See?_ thinks Ric, sounding pleased alongside their shared arousal. _God, I'm good. Keep scratching. Then throw your leg over his ass and get him in closer. Roll your hips, wrap your yourself around him -- you have no idea what it feels like when you do that -- he'll lose it, you'll be on equal ground --_

 _If you were here,_ thinks Damon, his tricky lithe limbs starting to put Ric's plan to action, _You would teach us both._

_Class is already in session. Pay attention. Wrap yourself around him, Damon, and don't let go. Let him kiss you, he looks like a kisser. And don't think about me._

_Impossible,_ Damon returns. _I always think about you._

In his head all of Alaric's love is there and as clear to read as the endless pages of text Damon has read through these last few days. _Don't worry about me, at least,_ he amends. _Try that for a little while._

Damon is silent, struggling to keep Alaric grounded, the connection starting to fray and snag and pull. _It doesn't matter where I am or what or who I'm doing. I'm with you, Ric._

 _I know._ Ric's confident affirmation comes from far away now, can scarcely be heard but is heard. _And I'm with you. I always am. Even though I can't stay any longer, it doesn't matter. You know all my best moves. You're a sex god. You'll be fine. Damon--_

“Damon--” Elijah is leaning in, eyes lit by internal kindling, since Damon is still scratching and has drawn him into a tighter orbit with a leg thrown over Elijah's exquisite ass. As per Ric's instructions. Elijah is leaning in to kiss him, as per Ric's predictions, and Damon rises to meet him halfway in an open-mouthed collision. 

He takes advantage of the distraction of that to slide his legs more firmly around Elijah's strongly muscled body, crossed at his lower back. Spreads his thighs to the right angle and pushes up his hips and Elijah gasps when he does that, a rare sound like digging up buried treasure. 

Elijah's grip slackens, and Damon tugs insistently at his captured hand until he frees it. Then he loops his arms around Elijah's neck, and they're kissing and fucking and kissing and fucking so fucking deep, and Elijah's rhythm is older than old, it's ancient, it's primeval.

Ric is lost now from his awareness, the immediate present at least, snapped back to wherever he's been hidden. But he's gotten Damon off to the races and now Damon knows what to do, where do go. Elijah wants this, wants it like this, just like this, this rough, intimate sort of fuck that pushes far past the boundaries of the desired-acquaintance-screw. 

It makes sense, of course, Elijah moving with the concentrated deadly graceful skill like he displayed in everything. Sex the only real medium other than delicate heart-ripping that could showcase his dual appreciation for pain and beauty. 

Damon gets it, gets that, fits them together best, and they fuck to the body-bending limits of vampiric endurance, with the unpredictable intimacy they loved and sought in humans strung between them, too.

Elijah makes them both come at the height of it, two hard bodies locked in hard relentless motion, their kiss still as fixed. He gains speed only when they've reached the limits of even supernatural stamina, applying his masterful hand back to Damon's cock for a series of twists and turns like the plot of the greatest story ever told. 

He slams against Damon, into Damon, aims perfectly exactly correctly wonderfully well oh just so fucking good, Elijah thrusting just where he's meant to be. 

Damon comes explosively between them, wrenching his mouth free so Elijah can hear his well-earned name when he says it, and Elijah comes with him when he does that. 

As far in Damon as can be reached, breached, Elijah's head goes back and he shows the marble line of his throat, lips kiss-stung and vermillion, parted, returning the gift of names as he lets himself be pulled apart and somehow even deeper. 

Breathing together a long while, Elijah eases free and rolls to the side, lies flat on his back next to Damon, and they lie for a longer while like that.

“Not bad, eh?” Damon says finally, so that he says something, digging a light elbow into Elijah's rib. “Worth the wait?”

“Yes,” Elijah agrees beside him. Both still breathing hard with recovery, which meant they'd been rather exceptional, really, they watch the ceiling together, tracing the cracks that years have added to the untended walls. “An exceptionally good start,” he says, like he can hear Damon's internal monologue now.

Damon's internal monologue is more like _holy fuck shit whoa_ but he swallows and says, “A start.”

“Why, yes.” Elijah's tone is lazy, sated, broadcasting from the moon, but with an edge to suggest he won't stay there long. “We have only just begun.”

All of Damon reknots in reaction -- still riding aftershocks of orgasm and Elijah's already talking about the next one, and the one after that, and the one -- _Breathe,_ he can almost hear Ric say, _You're the luckiest sonofabitch on the planet tonight_ , so Damon breathes.

They're quiet because there's a sudden vortex of hesitation drawn up around Elijah, and it's impossible to miss, even when they're not looking at each other directly.

“I would tell you a story,” says Elijah, after choosing to say what he had been deciding on saying. 

And all of Damon is tense again, just when he's remembered to breathe and everything, because Elijah suddenly sounds his age, which is really freaking old, older even than the story he wants to tell, which Damon can hear is old. But it's important, all of it is, so he says, his eyes making maps from the cracks on the ceiling, “I like stories.”

“So do I,” says Elijah. “But this one happened to me, and I change my mind, year to year, as to whether I like it. I had hoped not to tell you it at all.”

It's important, really important, Damon knows it is, so he makes himself calm down and sound somewhat calm and say, “Go on. Can't tease like that, you know, against the rules,” and he presses his elbow again to Elijah's side, until Elijah speaks as though from a larger distance than the sliver of space between them.

“In the late middle ages, in my spare time I took to the practice of debunking witch-hunters as that mania swept too many kingdoms. The great majority of hunters were cheap charlatans, cruel mockeries of men whose tricks I could easily expose. Many innocent lives were being lost to paranoia and cruelty. I saved those I could. It so happened, of course, that sometimes a real witch stood accused, and that often necessitated a more direct intervention on my part: compulsion, the occasional torching of a barn, et cetera. I have ever found it beneficial to be maintain equitable relations with the guardians of nature.” 

Elijah pauses a breath, and Damon is listening extra-hard and nods to show that he is, so Elijah goes on. “I began to see that there was a pattern, that whenever a real witch was caught it was by the same man, one I had never met, who seemed always two steps ahead of me. Over the years it became almost like a game between us. The townspeople said that he was fair, and just, and always knew exactly where to look for witches.”

Damon isn't sure he likes the story, but he likes picturing Elijah in a hot medieval doublet so he does that while he listens, closes his eyes and scrunches them up tight. “I was intrigued by this foil of mine, of course, but unbothered, until something happened. Something -- altered. Where he had before handed his catches over to the local authorities, he started killing them. He left a path of bodies that I followed, many of them barely past the first blush of innocence, or else making martyrs of bent old herb-women. No one liked witches very much, but they liked serial murdering without the facade of a trial even less, and the countryside was awash in torches and pitchforks.” 

With his eyes closed, Damon can almost see the distant firelight through the darkness. “They caught him, at last, attempting a savage crime, and said he had the way of a wild man, possessed by demons. When they took him down, he screamed for me. So they did not kill him that day.”

Damon is listening, and Elijah can't seem to halt the saying of it once begun; his low voice is steady, with the phrasings of a well-held memory. “As it happens, my name was known there as it is in some lands,” which Damon thinks might be an understatement and a half. “I was alerted, and went at once to where he was being held. Expecting a monster, instead I found Marcellus.”

Elijah swallows, swallows the name. “In a dank dungeon I met a man bright as springtime and as sane as you or I --” he and Damon put their eyebrows up in concert at that -- “or anyone. He was very much a person in his right mind, swearing that he could not remember the crimes he had apprehended for. He did not deny hunting witches. When I appeared, he told me immediately to be at ease, that he had long known what I was but had no quarrel with vampire kind. I was surprised, which is always surprising, but acknowledged my lineage.

He told me his: he came from a long line of witch-hunters; it was something of a family tradition going back many generations. There are bad witches along with the good and the neutral, I know you've known them, Damon -- in addition to those who have lost control of their minds or their powers. Nature must ever have balance. So we have witches, and witch-hunters.”

“Huh,” says Damon, thinking about it. “Haven't run into one of those yet, I don't think, though I know some witches who could use--”

“His family had held to a righteous and, as they saw it, virtuous tradition of bringing witches to justice. Times were different then, but they sought to only identify those who posed a risk to themselves or the population. They were trained since childhood and excelled and had almost a sixth sense for uncovering rogue witches, but once this was accomplished, they turned their prisoners over to local authorities, respecting the varied laws of country. 

For the years when I followed him, Marcellus had done this, leaving me to untangle the knots he had bound where I saw fit. They are exceptionally strong, and must be cunning, witch-hunters, but they do not believe in delivering the final blow. It runs counter to their very charter. When he was read the bill of his crimes, Marcellus wept. He was a brilliant man, with the too-sensitive soul that can come with brilliance, and he was faltering under accusation of having committed acts against nature and his nature. Worse, he swore he had no memory of them. It is a wretched feeling not to understand what one's own body has done.”

Damon is really, really sure now that he doesn't like the story at all but makes himself breathe shallowly. Laces his finger together behind his head to hide the nervous twitches his hands want to make and listens.

“I believed him,” says Elijah. “We...we came to be in sympathy. For days, then weeks, we met to speak and seek a cure to his affliction. That required the compulsion of the town and the garrison stationed there, but the puzzle had become an important one.” 

“You had a thing for him,” says Damon, much more gently than before.

“I had a thing,” Elijah says after a pause. “Indeed, I did. Marc was the most fascinating and world-wise human I had encountered, and even better, a new thing entirely, he knew me for what I was and knew that we lived with far more than met the eye. While they have no magic themselves, witch-hunting families have long amassed amulets and treasures and weapons as spoils from their efforts.”

“He had a ring,” Damon blurts before he can stop himself, then clenches his teeth so hard pain shoots across his jaw. 

“No,” says Elijah. “No ring. But when he was afflicted he was indeed a different creature, as has happened to your Alaric. I saw it myself a month after our meeting. I awoke to find a wooden stake in my heart, which, being neither white oak nor a certain dagger did little but put me out exceedingly. Marc's eyes were no longer his own, and his hands were a killer's hands. His voice droned vengeance and seethed with rancor. He was not the man I had come to know. Unfortunately he still retained his memories, alongside an alien persona, which made the things he said all the worse. 

I...secured him, and came to know that...entity...over the course of days. I almost wanted a monster again, Damon, hungry by nature, but the thing in Marc was worse. It was rationalized murder, cold, calculated, cruel destruction such as even my brothers would shy away from. Somehow it had seized him, and amplified his life's work into blind hatred mated to vigilante justice.”

“I'm not sure I like this story,” Damon says, unable not to say it then, but Elijah ignores him. His voice speeds up, as though they're nearing a sort of end. 

“When Marc regained his body, he had no memory of what had passed. But the affliction became more recurring, as it seemed to in cycles, and the need for a solution more pressing. There were weeks where we spent our days together, and at night I would sit by the bedside of a thing that spat and spewed. My resources were not insignificant, but we were considerably more limited in scope and reach than your current modern search. All my wealth and influence brought a few spare books and manuscripts, a march of truth-sayers and opportunists and a few bits of advice from witches in my service. I even consulted the holy men of varied denomination, but they could not name nor save him either. 

At last, desperate after a night Marcellus nearly escaped me, I sought the favor of one of the most powerful witches on the continent. It was a difficult bargain, but she finally revealed the elusive cure for one so magically wrought. I begged to know if there were other options. Perhaps that could be so, she said, but this was the only known certain remedy. It was more than enough, and I had overstayed my welcome, so I left with the knowledge and returned to my--” 

After all of it Elijah can't seem to find the right word. Damon helps. “You loved him,” he says, quietly, in the space between them on the bed. Ric taught him that one, how to identify that. Love, real love, was different from Katherine. Damon's heart has jumped around a bit and leapt into his throat and his brain keeps looping _cure cure cure cure_ but Elijah had said himself he didn't really like the story so

“Yes,” Elijah says, without pause this time. “I did. And yet even then I did not know all of him. When I returned, he was himself, but when I told him how we might defeat his torment, he violently rebuffed any solution born of witches. It ran deeper than the discrimination of his occupation, and that evening he revealed to me the last pieces that he had kept from the puzzle. As a child his mother had been killed by a witch, and Marcellus cursed before she was captured; even at the stake she would not reveal the nature of what she had done to him. He lived in fear for a great deal of his young life, which drove him to train in the family tradition with single-minded exceptionalism. 

Then, on his twenty-fifth birthday, he died. Over the course of a day, his body began to fall apart as though it had never been held together until it simply stopped. The next day, he awoke in perfect health, to find himself buried in his best suit.”

They both shudder, a mutual vibration on the bed. Elijah says, “He...got out, somehow, and for the next twenty-five years lived a life in the same single-minded pursuit, until his fiftieth birthday, when the process repeated itself. He had been half-anticipating it this time, and at least made provisions not to be put under ground. What he did not expect when he awoke was that his body would be restored to that of a twenty-five-year-old's. He kept what skills and experiences he had, but he was a fresh-faced youth again, wispy-bearded. Even more extraordinarily, he found himself immune to human disease, and healed quickly from wounds.”

“Hmm,” Damon considers. “Doesn't sound _all_ bad. _I_ don't mind keeping this face forever.”

“At surface it may seem as much a blessing as a curse,” Elijah agrees. “Only remember that then as ever we lived in suspicious times, with great distrust of anything deviant. Every twenty-five years Marcellus would be inevitably driven away from wherever he had lived and would lose those acquaintances whom he had kept for decades. It is no easy thing, as you know, Damon, which is why we keep mostly to our own kind, and keep moving, as Marc did for a long while, trusting only the generations of family who kept his secret. 

As he aged and was reset to youth again and again he tried on different roles. Had been a husband, a father, once or twice, when he saw a woman worth loving. Later he would check in on his bereaved family in the guise of a young cousin. Sometimes he rose to rank in some institution or another, because he had the time. But always he hunted witches. When our paths crossed he was one hundred and fifty years old -- around your age. Such it was that I had never met another human like him.

He had been afraid to tell me this final secret, so long had it been kept hidden. He was ashamed of it, thought it marked him as freakish and damned, and he felt guilty for having led so many lives while witnessing so much death around him. He was certain then that it was very much a curse and not a gift at all, that in giving him rebirth the witch had consigned him to living hell on earth as she must have intended. Now, with his mind no longer entirely his own and terrible events resulting, he was becoming ever more sure that this was meant to be his end, that all the signals were in place. 

I was selfish, perhaps, self-interested, at least, so I viewed the situation differently. The unanticipated twist in what Marc was gave me hope that my witch's prescription would prove effectual. When I described his symptoms, she noted that he sounded like a man overdone with dark magic, though he bore no material marks of it. Now that I knew him to be so accursed, I was confident she was right and we must take her way. 

I had, in my years, met other people who had crossed the line between death and back again -- am one, myself, have made too many, too -- and that changes us more than anything else can. Think of vampires: we die but once, but come back all the different for it; remade men and women with altered needs and cares and appetites. Those who have sought to blur the boundaries between life and death with magic and other alchemies have their names written in the worst hidden histories. Humans were not meant to cheat death, and nature must ever have a balance.”

Elijah can surely sense the pressure radiating from him, Damon strung up like a too-tight bow, one pluck and he'll snap. “I explained to Marcellus that I now believed his affliction to have been the result of too many reincarnations. He'd never asked for it, but he had already died and returned seven times, by his count. That tears you up in a way unseen, makes you susceptible to anything seeking passage from the Other Side. It fit with the witch's instructions, even when she had thought him to be simply a man possessed. Marc listened, and agreed that my theory could be correct. But he rebuffed the remedy because it came from a witch, and an infamous one at that. His distrust ran too deep, was carved in his birthright, and he was convinced that she had deceived us, or else would not reveal other cures that surely only waited to be found. I was not as persuaded.”

Damon is holding his hands clenched so tightly behind his head he knows his knuckles have gone white. “Tell me,” he whispers. He uses his name. Like a summoning. “For God's sake, Elijah. Tell me the remedy.”

There's the sound of movement on sheets, of Elijah rolling sideways in bed to face him, head propped in hand and face as still as stone. Damon's staring bug-eyed up at the ceiling cracks, but makes himself lose their mazes, makes himself look into Elijah's eyes while he says it.

“You're going to have to turn him, Damon,” Elijah says. “It is the only way.”

Damon's heart stops, skip-starts, stops again. Then his pulse comes to thundering life in a rush behind his ear and and his ears ring as though Elijah's words have triggered explosives. Explosions are happening and won't stop exploding. He works his jaw. His mouth and tongue are dry. He knows his eyes have gone extra-round and gray-bright, bigger than harvest moons. His greatest hope and his greatest fear all at once, his most profound wish and his deepest terror about how this has to end --

Damon tries to say eight million sentences but what he says is, “You're sure?” His lips are blood-red, and red blood leaks sluggishly from the lower lip he bites through. 

Elijah's gaze is unblinking, though his face softens a little: sandstone now, shapable at least, smooth and cool. “I had hoped to be proven wrong,” he says. “Alaric's situation has different hallmarks, and the resources at your disposal are considerable in these networked days. Your devoted band has done well, too, in the search, and I have also not been idle. But you have not yet found another way, Damon, and there is very little time left. I believe, as I did then, that the witch spoke the truth. Once a person has come back from death so many times there is little herbs or chanting or other baubles can do for it. Those are human panaceas, and what has happened to the mind and body and soul in this eventuality is supernatural. Metaphysical, if you will.”

Kill him. Ric is going to kill him. There's no way he'll ever agree to this, no way, not even on the strength of Elijah's recommendation or if Damon talks him through the whole story, using puppets for emphasis. 

This they hadn't talked about for a long time, didn't ever really talk about, tried to avoid talking about it every moment of their lives. Damon teased about it sometimes when he dared and that was all. Just the once Alaric had responded with, “Someday maybe we'll talk about it,” which implied a far distant future and definitely not now. 

“Tell me,” Damon murmurs again, knows he sounds desperate and doesn't care. “Tell me why.”

Elijah scrubs his free hand over his brow, runs fingers through bedhead hair that instantly resettles to fantastic. He lets out a low breath, half a sigh. “As she explained it, one so afflicted has no other option save total death or lifelong imprisonment, where they would still no doubt be a danger to themselves and others. The third option is to become a vampire. It is a rite of blood, strongly affective. Earth against the spirits of air. The act of a last complete death of body, mind and soul is enough to purge other passengers. Nature, it seems, will forgive previous transgressions, believing that living again as a vampire is punishment enough. Many would resist our way, and always have. It is never easy.”

“It's better than door A or B,” Damon says too quickly, but Elijah nods. Elijah understands in this. 

“Tell me,” Damon says, a third time, like a fairy tale, not sure he wants to peek beyond the door.

Elijah says, “Marcellus would not see this logic. As the days wore on it became an increasingly chaotic struggle to keep the town in thrall and to keep him tied down at night, a thing I hated, and collect him against me in the morning, broken. I am not a saint, Damon.”

“Amen,” from Damon. “What did you do?”

Elijah is close and very far away. “In the end, I chose for him. One afternoon, with lovely weather outside that Marc couldn't see in his dungeon, I made love to him as I ever had, and I compelled him, and I turned him.”

Damon's heart stops again he thinks but his mouth never stops working. He can see it like a movie unspooling in his head and he has approximately four trillion questions that need for answers but he says, “Did he forgive you for it?”

The silence lasts too long. Then Elijah says, “I believe that he eventually he may.”

Damon's heart won't quit being screwy. Six days. The thought of six days without Alaric makes him want to burn everything down, and Elijah has gone six hundred years without the man he'd loved so that he might save him in his way.

Elijah's still talking. “We have had an exchange of letters, and I know him to be in France--”

“No.” It's out before he can stop it, Damon's mouth can never keep closed when it should. “Elijah, thank you, really, truly, but I can't. I can't turn Ric, he won't want me to, and I can't -- I can't do this crap without him --” _This crap_ was maybe a vague term to describe life in Mystic Falls and living in general but Elijah would get it. 

Elijah tilts his head a fraction. “I do understand the sentiment,” he says. “But would you prefer to see him slain by one of my siblings, or locked away insane? Those were the options left to me, and they are fast becoming yours, Damon. I had hoped to be wrong. I would not have told you of Marcellus. Sometimes, however, the lessons we take from history prove prudent. Surely your Alaric would agree on that.” 

He smooths a calming, grounding hand down Damon's flank while Damon's brain-gears are whirring. “And certainly you see the logic. He will be free of this 'psycho killer' instinct, as you describe it. If he is a vampire, he will no longer be a threat to my family. In the bargain you do not come away empty-handed either.”

A thousand million quadrillion mind-blowing images of Ric as a vampire, such a gorgeous fucking vampire, the vampire Damon has wanted to make him into since the first time he'd seen him, and the way they'd tear their way across time together. “Yeah,” he returns. “I'm not exactly opposed to the idea.”

“I'm not sure you fully understand,” Elijah says. His hand is still stroking with transcendent pressure, warming Damon's skin while his words bring a chill to it. “There is very little time remaining. If you do not, I will offer the choice to Alaric that I did not give Marcellus. One way or the other, we must have this done, Damon.”

The complete and utter freak-out zone isn't doing Damon much good so he tries to come back from it. All he wants to do is reach out immediately for Ric, fill his mind with the problem, be surrounded by his love, thinks maybe somehow together as always they'll find a way. 

But he can't tell Ric about this, not yet, doesn't know what he'll do, can't handle Ric's repulsion or recoil mind-to-mind. And Alaric shouldn't know before they were sure this was the only way, because the thing in him despised vampires, and he might claw himself apart if he knew what they were planning. 

To make him a vampire. To make Alaric a vampire. To have him there, strong and quick and gorgeous at Damon's side forever. Or else Alaric, a vampire, hating him for it, maybe forever. 

Elijah's lips are pursed. “You have a day, if that. In the morning I will take you to him, and you will decide.”

In the darkness, in the space between them, Damon's lips are bloody once more with too much thinking, and all the hamsters in his head have spun off their wheels. He reaches over for Elijah, pulls the solidness of him closer. He's heavy as a monument but can be shifted in the sand. He angles and realigns against Damon. A raised eyebrow serves the part of communication. Damon says, “You said you change your mind about the story. Would you do it again?”

“Yes,” Elijah says, shifting, his skin against Damon's skin. “I am selfish, perhaps, but he is cured, and he is alive. That is enough.” His hands snake their way through the black-ink tangle of Damon's hair. “Most of the time, it is enough,” and Elijah leans in to lick the traces of blood from Damon's bit lip. He seals their mouths back together like the room has lost all oxygen and the only preservation can be found in the breath between their kiss.

When he breaks away, Elijah says, “We'll forget the past and future for now, I think,” and Damon doesn't think that's possible, not with a head full of Alaric and a dozen branching spiraling possibilities, not with Elijah really saying _You're going to have to turn him, Damon, it is the only way_ over and over again in his head like a skipping record. But then Elijah moves back up and over him, shows how good he is at blotting out everything but the present.

Shows Damon what he'd promised him before, that they had only just begun. Shows Damon orgasms numbered one through four. Shows and takes Damon in every position imaginable and some that defied imagination and is taken by Damon like that. 

The bed creaks, wails, then sags sideways with their frenetic motion but that only increases the challenge. They merge together defying gravity, and for a while Damon doesn't have to think about anything except bodies and fucking and the limits of bodily fucking. These times, there is no reserve between them, only sympathy.

In the morning pre-dawn, Elijah is sleeping and Damon lies awake. He is as grateful as he's ever been to another soul for what Elijah has given him, for all of it. But Damon should have known when he first saw Elijah appear that his heart would come to be ripped out before the end, one way or the other.

  



End file.
